Quote Originally Posted by suvorov
1.
The point is not loose formation, its walking into pikes.
Pikes are longer so if you charge them your own weight and speed make the pike very powerful. If uyou only walk into pikes the pikes dont get this bonus of your own speed and weight so the pikes cant do much against your armour because pikemen dont make same power on their own.
That's exactly my point about using pikemen as the target. Braced pikes reflect the charge bonus of the attacker back onto himself. Therefore, if a knight with charge 8 runs into a pikeman, the pikeman gets the +8 to his attack instead of the knight. If you walk the knights in, however, this bonus does not apply. The pikes will still have a reach advantage, but as soon as the knights either push past the pikes or lap around then the pikemen are at a huge disadvantage. They have no shields, mediocre attack and very poor defense skill, so the knights usually win out on raw stats despite being outnumbered. It's a bit of an exploit I guess to use knights in this way, but the pikes have served their purpose regardless: they stopped the knights from charging. The pikemen may not beat the knights in the melee (maybe their melee stats should be tweaked higher or their formation improved so that they don't drop their pikes so easily) but now you can send in the halberdiers to help out.

Historically, it WAS just about possible for cavalry to defeat spear/pike/bayonet units if they could break into their formation. Sometimes this happened by chance (the dying horse at Quatre Bras), sometimes by firepower (using pistols or galloper guns to blast holes in the lines) and sometimes through sheer determination (fighting their way past or around the pikes). I'm not too worried if horsemen can beat pikemen under the right conditions. If those conditions are too easy to achieve however, then maybe the pikes need a little buff.